Last year, Tetrarch guitarist Diamond Rowe became Jackson’s first ever female signature artist, and the monster single-cut Monarkh guitar that came of that partnership quickly established itself as an unrelenting weapon of EMG-loaded brutality.

One thing that didn’t make it into her DR12 guitar however, was a tone knob. And in the latest episode of Guitar.com Originals Series My Guitars & Me, the queen of ‘freak tone’ explained why she has absolutely no need for such things – and never has.

“Honestly, the first adjustment I made when we were putting the specs together for this guitar was to get rid of the tone knobs,” she reveals. “It was like the very first thing I told them, because in all the years I’ve been playing since I was a child, I don’t remember ever adjusting a tone knob for literally anything. So, I’m like, you know what? Clearly, I’m not going to miss it. So, I just did two volume knobs.”

Diamond also had a word for the often-maligned EMG pickups, and poured cold water on those who think that active pickups can suck your tone.

“I gravitated towards playing what my favourite bands played because when I was 11, I didn’t know anything about, you know, different pickups, active, passive, string gauges, nothing like that,” she explains. “It was just like, oh, Kirk Hammet plays EMGs, you know, so that’s what I want to play. So my first guitars had them in there. And I feel like it just became a part of my sound.”

“Whenever I play EMGs, it just it’s that metal sound that everyone knows. And some people like that about them and some people don’t. They feel like it might take away some of like the, you know, uniqueness of their playing or like the, you know, whatever. I don’t. I love them. I plug and play EMGs and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I need.’”

Check out the full episode of My Guitars & Me with Diamond below, and check out the band’s latest album, The Ugly Side Of Me here.

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